Why Projects Fail

According to the PMI’s Pulse of the Profession research, fewer than two-thirds of projects meet their goals and business intent, and about 17% fail outright.

In fact, success rates have been falling since 2008.

Why is this?

Well, there are many reasons … and here are a few:

an inconsistent approach to project management leading to confusion over what the project is expected to achieve,

key project roles are not sufficiently articulated, which results in a lack of direction and poor decision making,

appropriate technical expertise isn’t employed in projects resulting in products being delivered that are not fit for purpose or incur additional expense to correct or replace, and

technology whole life costs not considered during the project leads to products that are expensive to maintain.

I could go on … but I won’t.

Rather, I’ll give you 60 reasons why these sorts of problems can be avoided or eliminated. If businesses invested time into growing their project management expertise and implemented a project management process framework they would see many benefits.